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Why a second Piper Website?
One of the first questions that would arise in my mind if I saw a second Piper website would be : “Why? Isn’t one website more than enough? Has someone not received the grading he was expecting and now split off to form his own organization, as per usual?”
The answer, certainly to the last question, is “no”. There are several reasons as to why I have decided to put together my own website.
1. Piper, as systematised and structured by Nigel, is one coherent art. There are certain basic principles, techniques and strategies that do not change; and yet it is a totally personal art, it is fluid and alive in the sense that it is expressed by the practitioner in a way that is appropriate to his build, mindset and experience. In Jason’s case, for example, Piper has had to reshape itself around the contours of what is possible with regards to his leg.
In that sense, there is no such thing as “Piper Knife”. There is the individual, expressing himself in a variety of ways and choosing to use his understanding of Piper to react appropriately to a given situation.
This brings us to me. Nigel, Lloyd and Jason, taken together and after having had a couple of super-sized meals, still barely reach my bodyweight! Ok, that may be a bit of an exaggeration but what is unarguably true is that my 6 foot 6 height and 115 kg frame (253 pounds) frame cannot move in the same way as Nigel and Lloyd do. Furthermore, being German and musically utterly untalented, some of the rhythms of Piper, as commonly used or expressed, have always given me some problems, they are not natural to me.
This has not necessarily been a bad thing. In trying to move in this rhythmical manner I often come up with all kinds of weird broken rhythms and movement patterns that have the advantage of being utterly unpredictable! Heck, sometimes I don’t even know what I’m going to be doing next. Also, I have learned to find the rhythm within myself, the one that is appropriate to my personality and physique.
Early on in my training Nigel suggested that my expression of Piper would follow more along the lines of physically large Piper practitioners he has known, learnt from and trained with. In that spirit he would often put me under Shadley’s tutelage, since Shadley is a large and very solid individual who moves in a manner very different from Nigel’s incredible speed-oriented style.
My expression of Piper is thus a mix of what I have learnt in this way and of my fairly extensive hand-to-hand combat experience gained in five years of working as a bouncer in the harbour area of Cape Town. In these years I developed a liking for close in work, involving grabbing, pushing, pulling, tripping, biting (the only time I ever came close to losing a fight, I bit off the other guys ear), open handed strikes, knees, headbutts and elbows. When I lived in Thailand, studying Thai massage, I added some Muay Thai clinch work to the mix and I have Matt Thornton to thank for exposing me to some Greco-Roman drills with regards to the clinch.
2. About three years ago I taught a Piper seminar for my friend Alfred Plath (FMA/ QuickStick) in Germany. Last year I taught Piper seminars for Kurt Orum’s Dai Ki Haku organization in Denmark and at Master Vohra’s Tae Kwon Do dojang in Nottingham, England. I have also twice been to Israel, teaching for the Hashita organization.
In teaching people who have had no previous exposure to anything even vaguely similar to Piper, I have had to go back to the drawing board to find ways to bring across what Piper is.
3. Since I am neither Nigel nor Lloyd, I can bluntly state on my website that I think people are foolish for not having made a plan to get these two to come over to teach seminars internationally. No, in spite of what one congenital idiot has said on the Net, they are not looking to make large amounts of money by teaching (the same pony-tailed, pot bellied attack hamster also stated that the USA could turn South Africa into a radio-active parking lot in a few minutes flat, I saw that e mail myself).
4. I am an author. Aside from Thai massage and teaching martial arts, writing books is what I do for a living. My first two books were published by British and American publishers and are available via Amazon and bookshops worldwide. My third book is going to be an e book on Piper and will be marketed and sold via this website. It should be available just after mid-year.
So for these and a number of other, lesser reasons I decided to put together a Piper website of my own. I hope you find things here that resonate with your own practice and help to enrich it.
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